The Lost Prince
The Innkeeper was washing the same mug he always washed when he was bored and waiting for customers to come through the door. It was spotless. More than spotless, it was polished. But he kept washing it because he was bored and it kept his hands busy.
There were twelve doors to the Inn, and each of them was both opened and closed. They led to different places, different worlds, and different times. They led nowhere, and they led everywhere. For this was the inn of lost souls, and the Innkeeper was waiting for a customer.
The door to nowhere opened, and the Innkeeper looked up as a three-eyed man with shoulder length hair and a traitor’s brand on his bare chest walked in. The man flinched under his gaze.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” the man said. “Am I welcome here? I shan’t make a nuisance of myself if—“
“Leave any thought of violence at the door, and you will find yourself welcome,” the Innkeeper answered. “Come, have a seat. You’re my only customer at the moment, but I knew you were coming. Someone is always coming. Even when nobody is near.”
The three-eyed man’s shoulders slumped with relief. He took a seat at the bar, and the Innkeeper left, returning with a plate of mutton and tubers. The stranger’s mouth watered at the scent, and he dug in ravenously.
“So how does the prince of an Eternal Heritage become a branded traitor?” the Innkeeper asked conversationally, picking up his polished mug.
“You know who I am?” Uttico asked, looking up. “How do you know I am the prince without knowing how I come by this mark?”
“I was making conversation, Your Majesty. When you left your thoughts at the door, I had a peek through them. You know how it is. After all, when your mother released me from the Dream, she did not bind me as tightly as she might have. It was her will that my door be opened to you. Do not think yourself completely abandoned.”
Uttico slumped, his eyes watering softly. “I really fucked things up.”
“Yes, you did. Would you like to talk about it?”
Uttico sighed. “Can I have a bath and a change of clothes, perhaps? After that, maybe I’ll be ready to talk.”
“Of course. I turn away no guest to my Inn,” the Innkeeper said. “Save the troublemakers, of course.”
Uttico finished his meal, cleaning his plate, before stumbling up the stairs. He walked into the room that the Innkeeper had indicated contained the bath, undressed, and fell asleep in the steaming water.
He had been wandering for fifty years, for time passed swiftly in Tal-kathor. He had thought he could bear the isolation no longer when he had finally found the door to the Inn.
Thank his Mother’s mercy.
She had banished him from his Dream, but allowed him the soft refuge of the Inn of Lost Souls.
A Dream she had made real millennia ago.
The Orc Who Changed
There was something heavy and wet on his chest.
Apagol woke up, bleary eyed. All three of them. That still gave him pause sometimes, having three instead of two. He couldn’t see perfectly out of the third, and from what he understood it didn’t actually see light anyway. When he tried to look out of it by itself he saw the world in grayscale, and he wasn’t exactly sure what the blurry objects were that he saw.
Qi?
Maybe.
Dao?
Maybe.
Something else?
Maybe.
The Ascendants didn’t explain to him. They said it was something to do with his bloodline and that he should ask his family if he wanted to train it.
Which was frustrating, since this body’s family had disowned him.
Looking down, he saw the source of the heavy dampness. Dasiana was using him as a pillow. And she was drooling.
He smiled. These days, he sometimes thought he was the luckiest man in the cosmos. He’d had lovers before, but none that made him feel the way that Dasi made him feel. He had lived for centuries before cutting the deal with the Heavenly Demons, but compared to now, everything he had felt as an orc except anger and the desire for vengeance felt empty and shallow.
Now?
He felt loved, he felt happy, and he loved in return.
And he felt lost, because all of his instincts were wrong on how to deal with those emotions. But Dasiana was patient, and she was helping him learn.
He lay his head back and stared at the ceiling, waiting patiently for Dasiana to wake on her own. She continued drooling on him. He didn’t mind. Even her drooling face was pretty.
She snorted and opened her eyes.
Her snorts were pretty.
Her embarrassed expression was adorable.
She was perfect.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked.
“Since a few minutes after you started drooling,” he answered.
She blushed, wiping her mouth on the sheets. He did likewise with his chest, and they got out of bed.
After dressing and doing the other things one does early in the morning, they left the room they shared in the inn they’d rented for the week. Taking their seats in the common room, they waited for the innkeeper to serve them.
A young looking Ascendant was nearby. Dasiana stiffened when she saw the brand through his laced shirt. Apagol had to look closer before he identified the rune.
Traitor.
“You can relax,” the stranger said. “You’re protected under this roof in ways that you do not realize. Which door did you come through?”
Apagol looked around, and suddenly realized that the Inn was rather larger than he thought it had been. There were twelve doors. One opened, and through it he saw an emerald landscape with an orange sky.
That was not Home.
“What is this place?” he asked, turning to the Innkeeper.
“Just a humble Inn that welcomes all wanderers, so long as they keep the peace,” the innkeeper answered. “Here’s your breakfast.”
He served them a platter of egg and ham before returning to his place behind the bar, polishing a clean mug.
“You needn’t worry,” the stranger said. “As long as you leave through the same door you came through, you’ll be returned whence you came.”
“And if we use one of the others?” Dasiana asked. Apagol could hear the nerves in her voice.
The stranger shrugged. “Don’t? This is the Inn of Lost Souls. The doors are waiting for the guests to arrive. I don’t know whose door you stumbled through, but you’re probably not the reason it was open. You don’t look very lost to me.”
“We were just looking for a quiet place to be alone,” Apagol agreed. “This place didn’t seem to have many customers and—“
He trailed off.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” the innkeeper said. “You can keep your coin or part with it, I trade in stories. So. To pay for last night, please, tell me a little about yourselves.”
Apagol sensed something from the man. A yearning that bordered on hunger. Apagol swallowed.
“What happens when we tell you?”
“He listens, and it sustains him,” the stranger answered. “That’s all. He gets a bit more time in the Real added to him before he fades into the Nothing, and you lose absolutely nothing.”
The stranger took a sip of his ale.
“Although the Inn is part of him as well. So when he ends, so does the Inn.”
Apagol swallowed. He looked at the door that he’d come through. He exchanged a glance with Dasiana. After more than nine years of companionship, they knew each others minds. They had to get out of there.
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But not before they paid their bill
The Regretful Prince
“They were cute together,” Uttico said once the couple had finished speaking and left through the door that was closed to him. Seven doors were open to him, and he hadn’t decided which one to try yet.
He had one hundred and fifty years left on his sentence. He could go back to Tal-kathor and serve it where time passed so rapidly that not even a full year would have passed at Home.
But Tal-kathor was a purgatory that bordered on being a hell, and he couldn’t stand the thought of returning.
The other options he knew less about. He was waiting for someone to step through those doors so that he could hear what waited on the other side before making his mind up.
“Yes, they were.” The Innkeeper agreed. “And they overpaid for their stay.”
“You didn’t tell them to stop.”
“Why would I? It cost them nothing, and it means everything to me.”
Uttico sighed. “How much time do I have left before you kick me out?”
“You have paid for six years so far,” the Innkeeper answered. “If you continue to pay as you go, then you can pass your entire sentence inside these walls.”
“I’d rather go to a world where time passes a bit faster,” he admitted. “Finding you was a great comfort, but I have things to say to Mother. I have to return, to make certain that my brother is…that he is who she thinks he is, and not something else.”
“And you think she’ll let you near him, after what you’ve done?” the Innkeeper asked.
Uttico sighed again. “An ale, please?”
The Innkeeper passed him a mug, which filled itself of the liquid by itself. Uttico drank, then sat back. “I’m not entirely incompetent. I knew what I was doing was risky. I erred. I admit that. If it had been the servant child instead of my brother who had faced the consequences, however, I would not be here. It should have been Pike who was devoured by my mistake.”
“But it wasn’t,” the Innkeeper said.
“No.”
“Would you feel better if it had been?”
“I would feel guilt at having caused the death of an innocent child,” Uttico admitted, “but I would have moved on in time. And so would the world. The family would have been compensated, and it would have been one more royal secret secured in the Archives.”
“And that would be better?”
“I don’t know” Uttico admitted. “I’m still not certain what actually happened. It’s not possible that my brother survived, but I do not believe that the thing which Devoured him could trick her, and I cannot think of anything else that could pull off that trick either. So I am left ignorant, and wondering, and that adds to my suffering as I wander and wait for my exile to end.”
The Innkeeper nodded, and left the man to his drink, which continually refilled as Uttico drank it.
There were certain conveniences which came with living in a liminal realm.
The door opened, and a green jigant walked in. The enormous cyclops looked around, then asked in a distinctly feminine voice “What is this place?” The voice definitely did not fit the stranger’s frame, being sultry and sweet.
The door and ceiling had both stretched to accommodate the giant when Uttico wasn’t looking, and in the corner of his eye he saw a giant booth.
“Welcome, Stranger,” the innkeeper said. “Why don’t you step inside and tell me a little about yourself. I have a goat roasting, if you’re hungry.”
The jigant looked suspicious, but sat in the seat. “The whole goat for me? I don’t have stone to pay.”
“That’s not how things work here,” the Innkeeper said. “We trade in stories, not irkstone. So why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself while you eat, friend? How come you to my humble establishment.”
The jigant continued to look suspicious, but collapsed wearily. “Feed me first, and I’ll tell you my life story, short as it is. Short as it will be. I am being hunted, and if I do not find safe refuge then my head shall adorn the lord’s battlement ‘fore the fortnight ends.”
“We’ll just see about that,” The Innkeeper said. “Let me fetch that goat, and then I’ll listen to your woes, whatever they may be.”
Uttico continued to drink his ale, watching the performance the Innkeeper put on, pretending to fetch a goat that manifested itself in its kitchen. The food was very real, but no beast died to make it. It simply was because the Innkeeper willed it to be.
He listened quietly as the jigant began retelling a long and winding tale of misadventure after misadventure, starting from the time she was as short as he was.
She was not so old, as far as her race was concerned, but she had , he thought. No wonder the Inn had been waiting for her.
The Jigant Who Broke the World
The Jigant burped, leaning back as she placed the last piece of goat rib on the table that was just her size. In the booth that was just right for her. In the Inn that had appeared when she was fleeing from the Lord’s hunters, a door in the middle of nowhere, standing between two trees.
It hadn’t been there when she looked back to see if she was leaving a trail.
She had been.
But when she looked forward, the door was there.
In her desperation, she had opened it, to find herself in this magic place. It was certainly magic, for there had been nothing on the other side of the door before she opened it.
So this was a thing of wizards. She wondered which one of the small men it was. The one who was cleaning the mug by the bar that was too short for her, or the one with three eyes and a mark on his chest that she did not identify, but which made her not trust him.
“I’m afraid I cannot pay you for the food I’ve eaten,” she admitted, her voice soft and sultry. “I—“
“We covered this. I trade in stories, not coin, and I believe you are more wealthy than you imagine,” the man behind the bar said kindly. But with just a little bit of an edge to his voice. Like he was thirsty, and she was standing between him and the well.
She sighed. “Well, if you insist, I don’t mind. The Lord’s men will be here soon to slay me, and—“
“The door closed behind you. They will not find you. You are safe.” The Innkeeper promised. “You have all the time in the world to talk. So. Start at the beginning. What is your first memory?”
She blinked her one, massive eye and thought.
“It is either sucking at my mother’s teat, or it is shitting my diaper,” she admitted. “Or something like that. Is that not the same for everyone?”
“You would be surprised how often it is not,” the Innkeeper answered. “But there is no shame in either of those memories, I would think.”
“Anyway, it wasn’t actually all that long ago that I was doing both those things,” the Jigant admitted. “I am only seven years old, after all.”
“A child?”
“Yes, by the way my people figure things, I am a child,” she admitted. “And I will be for two more years. But I was forced to grow up fast. In more ways than one. And the Wizards, they…they took time from me. That is why I killed them. But I didn’t know how important they were.”
She laughed.
“I am taller than my mother, and she is thirty!”
“I am sorry that was done to you,” the Innkeeper said. He was a good listener, she thought. And he said the right things to make her feel better.
“Will you take things from me? You are a wizard too.”
“I only take what is freely given. And you shan’t miss it when it’s gone,” the Innkeeper promised. “Tell me more.”
The Jigant thought, then decided there was no harm in it. The Lord knew her crimes, and her time was limited. Confessing to these little men would make her feel better, they were such good listeners.
“They came in the night, and they killed my mother and father. The hunters of the lord. They killed them for their eyes,” she said. “And my father’s penis. I watched as they butchered them and I screamed, and I thought I was next, but I was still small enough that they bound me in ropes. They were little men like you, but they were not kind.”
She wiped her eye. There was a handkerchief just her size on the table—had it always been there? She took it and wiped her face.
“I’m very sorry. That is a terrible thing to happen to a child,” the Innkeeper said. “You have paid me for your meal, you do not need to tell me more.”
“They took me to the city and they locked me in a cage while little people came to look and poke me with sticks,” she said. It felt good to talk. “And then the wizards came and took me away. They told me what they were doing. They were taking my power from me to make it theirs. But first they had to make me full grown, so they used their magic to do that. Then they were going to—I saw what they were going to do and I fought. And I got loose because the bindings were made to hold me when I was small and not when I was big. So I killed them.”
“Which door did you come through?” the man with three eyes asked suddenly.
“Huh?” She looked back at the wall. “The big one.”
“Right. Of course.” He turned to the Innkeeper. “Will you—“
“You’re one of my regulars now,” the Innkeeper said. “If this tale has given you a purpose where you had none before, then I shan’t stand in your way. When you are ready to return, you will find me.”
“Right then,” the man with three eyes said. “Goodbye child. I’m sorry I can’t give back what was taken from you, but I can make certain that the people who took it regret their actions. Stay here as long as you like, but know that you will be safe when you leave.”
And the three eyed man walked out through the door that was too big for him.
And he broke the world where she lived because of her story.
***
She burped, and she farted, and she laughed as the bubbles came up through the bath and floated on top of the sudsy water. She was cleaner than she’d ever been, having such a big tub to wash in. She was feeling like maybe the Lord’s Men couldn’t find her here, after all, and maybe they wouldn’t kill her and take her eye.
The man with three eyes hadn’t returned, though it had been three days.
She had told the Innkeeper her name, and more of her story. He had listened. He listened to everything she said and smiled and asked all the right questions to make her feel like she could tell him more. Like she could tell him anything.
She was sad sometimes.
She was angry sometimes.
He said that was okay. That it was probably good that she felt those things. That she shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling those things.
She wished that someone would kill the men who had hurt her parents and cut penises off like they’d done to her father.
But she was just one jigant, and she was only seven. Even if she was tall now, she wasn’t really…was she a woman or a girl? She didn’t know.
The Innkeeper didn’t give her the answers that she wanted. He couldn’t tell her why the world was so unfair, why the Lord and his Men and the Wizards were so mean. He couldn’t tell her what happened to her parents after they died. He couldn’t tell her anything that she wanted to know.
But he could feed her and he had this really, really big tub full of hot and soapy water for her to clean herself in, and she felt so much better.
Even if nothing was actually better.
Her parents were dead.
She had killed the wizards.
Was she a bad Jigant?
She pulled her knees to her chest, and she began to cry.
She cried until she fell asleep, and she felt better when she woke up, even if she was all wrinkly.
***
Uttico sneered in disgust at the pitiful display of a man before him. Honestly, cut off one little appendage and he turned into a coward.
Uttico looked at the object in his hand and snorted.
Little indeed.
“What is the matter, your lordship?” he asked, lowering himself to listen. “Is turnabout not fair play? You have been harvesting these things from the Jigants for decades now, from what I understand. Why? Is it because yours is so pitiful? It must be.”
“They are beasts!” the lord cried. “They—“
“Silence, or I will take your tongue too,” the Prince of the Radiant Future Eternal Heritage said to this pathetic lord of nowhere on a world that wasn’t even awake. “That reminds me. You’ve been harvesting their eyes too.”
He leaned forward, and—
After the mutilation of the Lord was over, he snorted.
“This world is broken,” he said. “I have one hundred and fifty years on my sentence. I don’t think it shall take me that long to put things to right. Even if I must blind all the kings and all the kings’ men in this pathetic little backwater.”
***
Six days passed. The Innkeeper had new clothes for her when she’d woken up for her bath, and they fit her perfectly. They didn’t look like the clothes her parents wore, or the clothes that her parents had dressed her in. It was a pretty sun dress, pink. She liked it. She liked it a lot.
She finally worked her courage up to ask him.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“It’s only common hospitality,” he answered. “I would do the same for any of my guests, if they needed it.”
“So I’m not special?”
“Everyone is special. That’s why I treat everyone the same,” the Innkeeper answered. “You may stay in my Inn for twenty years, if you’d like. Or you can leave whenever you want. But others will be coming and going during that time. I can open the door you came through somewhere else. Somewhere where your people live safely. Or somewhere where you can be alone. It’s your choice.”
She was quiet after that.
She had a decision to make.
And she thought really, really hard before she decided.
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